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Medical audit activity in primary and secondary care in the west of Scotland
Objectives:
To look at the level of activity and motivation towards audit in primary and secondary care in the West of Scotland.
Design:
An anonymised postal questionnaire survey.
Setting:
Area covered by six Health Boards in West of Scotland.
Subjects:
150 GPs and 150 hospital-based clinicians randomly selected from two departmental databases.
Results:
There appears to be a rule of diminishing returns in operation where half of those involved in audit have completed a project and half again have repeated a project. The current level of activity is significantly higher in secondary than primary care (chi 2 p = 0.05). There is significantly more audit activity in teaching than non-teaching hospitals (chi 2 p = 0.01) and significantly more GPs from larger practices have been involved in audit than those from smaller practices (chi 2 p = 0.05). All of those involved in audit have set standards. Levels of motivation towards audit were significantly higher amongst hospital-based clinicians than general practitioners (chi 2 p = 0.001).
Conclusions:
There has been a widespread involvement in audit in both primary and secondary care in the West of Scotland, but activity and enthusiasm or motivation are lower amongst general practitioners.